


I Have Friends in Holy Spaces

by queenofhell_proserpina



Series: Cultverse [6]
Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, The Cab
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cults, Blasphemy, Brainwashing, Double Penetration, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Group Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:10:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofhell_proserpina/pseuds/queenofhell_proserpina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd forgotten how to sing before I'd sung this song." The writing of Pretty.Odd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Friends in Holy Spaces

INTERVIEWER: So you’ve given up the religion totally?  
BRENDON: Yeah. I was raised in it, and then I started thinking for myself, and it’s not for me.  
…  
BRENDON: Music is my religion.  
\--Interview: Pop Icon

The first thing they do in the new house, after the unpacking but before the obligatory housewarming party, is christen the place. Shane goes out and picks up a girl—Brendon’s too recognizable, especially here, home—and when he gets back they shove the coffee table against the couch and lay her out on the floor like a sacrifice, Brendon kneeling over her with his cock in his hand like a fucked-up prayer. 

“Are you ready to be saved?” he asks, and when she says, yes, yes, he knows she doesn’t mean it but he lowers himself into her mouth anyway. He’s distracted—it’s hard to do it like this, all the control in his hands, have to be careful not to choke her too much (just enough), cradle her head, not crush her chest, take care of her—but he leaves enough of his concentration free to listen for Shane. Behind him he hears the crinkle of the condom, the thump of bodies as Shane pulls her legs apart, the slap of flesh and Shane’s slight grunt as he works his way into her, so close Brendon can feel Shane’s breath on his back, raising the tiny hairs there in reaction to his proximity.

Shane never touches him during this--it’s not what he’s here for--but Brendon feels better just to knowing he’s there, hearing him, sensing him, no matter how little it actually means to Shane. It isn’t the same as when it’s all of them, Brendon and Ryan and Spencer and Jon, a complete unit, but it’s closer to what it should be. If it were just him and the girl, it would just be sex; empty, meaningless, cruel. With Shane here, the cruelty has a purpose—he’s showing her the path, even if she’s too clouded by sin to follow it.

Conversion should be a group event. That’s one of the first things he ever learned, even if everyone else has forgotten.

*

_Even now that they’ve left the cabin, since they’re still recording, Shane still films Brendon in the studio, at home, making breakfast. He wants to record a conversion at some point, too, but no way in hell is Brendon signing off on that. It’s too private, too personal, to break someone open like that and put them back together. To break himself open with them, to help them into the light._

_Brendon hasn’t written any lyrics for the album yet, even though Ryan keeps pushing him to. He’s not quite there yet, not ready to sing his words out into the world, but he will be, soon. He can feel it. He can talk to Shane, though, answering questions into the shining lens of his camera; in fact, he thinks Shane is probably the only person he could talk to like this._

_It’s easier, with the buffer of the camera between them, but it’s also easier just because it’s Shane, the person helping Brendon to find his role in this brave new world._

*

Brendon is comfortable with hierarchy. Before, it was God, family, church, self; it was father, mother, children. Now it’s Pete, and the bands (Brendon privately thinks of them as the apostles), and the rest of the disciples; it’s Ryan and Brendon and Jon and Spencer. The hierarchy within his own band has always been looser, especially once Jon joined—he’d been saved longer than them, but he didn’t have a creative place in the movement until they enveloped him--but Brendon at least knew his place, knew what his purpose was. Maybe that makes him a shallow believer, the kind Ryan’s always complaining about, but that’s part of what made him accept the movement as the truth that it is—his own clearly defined role in it in relation to everyone else. He was Ryan’s voice.

Now, Ryan is breaking down the hierarchy, turning the order into chaos. He wants to sing; he wants the rest of them to write the music and the words with him. “We’re all equals,” he says now, like his cock isn’t down Brendon’s throat every night Keltie isn’t there. 

Brendon doesn’t mind; he likes it that way. He just wants there to be fucking honesty. Truth, between all of them.

And besides, the word is sacred, the word changes reality, and he doesn’t want Ryan to start believing the empty words he’s saying. He wants Ryan to remember who they are, what they are, to each other. They’re not equals. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.

The first time Ryan brought it up, he told Brendon first. At least, that’s what he said. Brendon chooses to believe it because he doesn’t want to think about Ryan and Pete, Ryan and Spencer and Jon, discussing Brendon like he’s the problem--how to tell him, how to deal with him, like they did when he was first converted. He knows they think they were subtle back then, but even half out of his mind, torn between the Church and the movement, hell and salvation (salvation and hell), he could tell what they were doing, talking around him like his parents did when he got suspended for smoking pot, turned away from the Church and towards the music, had to be kicked out. 

They won’t kick him out—can’t, maybe—but they can leave him out, and that’s almost worse, being there but not really a part of it. That’s the only reason he goes along with it, the plans for the new album. He doesn’t want to be left behind. 

Besides, even though it’s his new philosophy, his new truth, Brendon isn’t sure that Ryan entirely believes it. Ryan told Brendon about his plans for the new album with his cock in Brendon’s mouth and his fingers wrapped around Brendon’s wrists. “You’re still my voice,” Ryan whispered to him, “but you’re ready. You’re ready to write the words yourself, give voice to your own truth. We all are.” He’s Ryan Ross, so Brendon’s pretty sure that he saw the irony in telling Brendon to use his voice while his mouth was full.

*

_Shane doesn’t have the implicit, skin-deep understanding of the movement that Brendon does, so he asks questions with a skeptical tilt of his head, questions that make Brendon think, really think, about what he believes in._

_“Tell me about the sex,” he says, and Brendon clears his throat to speak._

*

Shane was there most of the time when they were up in the cabin. When he wasn’t filming them recording, he followed Brendon around with his camera and tried to get him to talk about the movement. “When you guys take over, there’s got to be someone documenting it. I mean, Pete’s plans include going public some day, right?” He sounded half-sarcastic, half-curious, and it was the curiosity that made Brendon agree. 

Shane didn’t understand the movement, not really. He thought it was all a big joke, saving the world through music, saving souls. Pete Wentz, our Lord and Savior, ha fucking ha. Maybe that was why Brendon liked spending time with Shane so much, because then he could pretend that it’s not deathly fucking serious, that the next album was just a laugh and a possibility and not the thing their future was hinging on. Still, the opportunity to express to Shane exactly what the movement meant to him, the potential to make him see…that’s what made him agree to be filmed, to open his empty throat on camera and try to find his own words.

Weirdly, Ryan approved of this plan, even though he’d never really liked Shane. He saw him as an interloper, an unbeliever, but fuck it. Ryan was the one changing the rules up. Brendon got to make his own decisions, choose his own friends, even if they’re from outside the movement. Besides, Ryan did trust Shane as a filmmaker, if not as a person, and that was really the important thing—after all, it’s art that Ryan respects over anything else. Pete signed off on it too, with the proviso that he got copies of all the footage and that Shane had to sign distribution off to DecayDance, so when they weren’t recording or playing video games or spending time together as a band, Brendon did his best to explain the movement to Shane. 

*

_“It’s not sex,” Brendon says. He thought Shane had gotten that by now, but apparently he hasn’t, still needs it explained in words, not just transmitted from Brendon’s body to his own through some fucked-up girl. Or maybe it’s just for the camera, for posterity. So other people will know._

_“It’s not sex,” he says again, trying to find the words. “It’s salvation.”_

*

Ryan hardly ever fucked him anymore except when Shane was around, and maybe Brendon liked that; liked seeing the bite of jealousy in Ryan’s eyes, the knowledge that despite everything, Brendon was still his. 

Ryan said that it was because spending so much time with a nonbeliever would corrupt him, that he needed to be reminded of why they were here and what they were doing, but he didn’t bring Jon and Spencer in with them when Shane was there. It was just him and Ryan and Ryan’s voice, speaking his words into Brendon’s throat; Brendon, echoing those words right back at him.

It wasn’t exactly using Shane, really. He’d want Shane around him even if it didn’t get him Ryan’s attention; and besides, Shane used him, too, to get laid and for a place to live and for a job, for entertainment value.

Everybody uses somebody else, all the time. Brendon figured that since there was no way to avoid it, the best you could ever do was be aware of it.

*

_“So, what? By putting your dick in some girl, you’re saving her?” Shane asks._

*

The girls all know what their place is. When he first talked about doing this with Shane, he gave him the rundown of what he wanted Shane to tell the girls before he brought them home: this is not a date, you will never see us again, it’s both of us, if you tell anyone no one will believe you. You’re going to learn the secrets of the world, spiritual enlightenment through bodily debasement. You’re going to learn like I did.

He doesn’t know if Shane actually goes through the whole thing every time he picks someone up, but none of them ever seems surprised, and besides, Brendon asks them if they want it beforehand, asks them if they want the word, if they want to be saved. 

They always say yes. Usually they don’t know what the fuck they’re saying yes to, but Brendon figures he’s teaching them. Teaching them not to say yes to every famous fuck that comes along, teaching them not to ignore salvation when it’s right there in front of them. 

It’s not like he treats them badly or hurts them. He just doesn’t give them what they’re expecting. He gives them what they should expect, shows them what they are, just little pieces in the puzzle to be used, if they don’t know the truth of the world. 

He’s still finding his new place in the scheme of things. This is part of it, showing lost girls the path, in a way he can’t do with his words yet. The words, though, those will come soon. Shane is helping him, with the words and with the rest of it, and he’s helping Shane, even if Shane can’t see it yet. 

*

_“No,” Brendon says. “No, nobody can save anybody else, we all have to save ourselves. But there are people, people who’ve seen the truth, who can guide people along the way.”_

_“People like Pete.”_

_“Yeah, people like Pete, and like Ryan, and like me,” Brendon says, half defensive, half proud._

_“And where does your dick come into this?”_

*

Brendon’s not really sure what to do with girls, when it comes to dating them. He’s not sure he’d know what to do with a guy, either, but it’s never come up; his place in the movement, what he does to sanctify the band, is different than his every day life. That’s what he tells himself, at least. He’s not sure it’s possible to live a secular life in this movement, but he does what he can, and his life involves women.

He keeps Shane around as much as possible, when he’s with girls; watches Shane and Reg as often as he can, just to get an idea of what he should be doing. Before he modeled his relationships on Ryan’s, and that wasn’t a good idea—that led to him and Audrey, and humiliation; he watched Jon and Cassie and Haley and Spencer, and that led to him and Beth and that whole fucking mess. 

Girls think he’s weird, anyway. Audrey was always giving him shit about him and Ryan, like it wasn’t totally normal for two guys in a band to be close. Beth was just too fucking normal, it made his head hurt to look at her, to hear all about her normal life and normal friends and normal fucking family. 

Lana was his last attempt at anything resembling a relationship, and thank god he barely fucking talked to her, with the way she blabbed about everything else. Maybe he could try dating one of the disciples, but the ones who are already saved treat him like he’s a god, and the ones he saves… after their salvation, he never sees them again. He likes just having that memory, him and them on the bathroom floor, wrapped in towels and wiped clean, like two kids.

He’s not sure why it doesn’t come naturally to him like it does to everybody else. Maybe it was being raised in the church; maybe it’s just something broken in him that he can’t learn to connect outside of the movement, outside of the music and the words, or his body. Body or soul, one way or another, but never both.

*

_Brendon pauses for a second, before he begins to speak again._

_“In…in my old church, so much of it’s about divorcing yourself from your body. Like, sex is good. It’s sacred. There’s supposed to be this…this union, of the body and the soul, in sex; at least if it’s in marriage. But really,” Brendon said, remembering those long mornings in church, all the dos and don’ts, all the dogma, “really, it’s all about controlling the body. Controlling your body and your thoughts to keep your soul pure, shutting yourself up in this little fucking box so you’re barely even a part of the world. And that’s not what reality is._

_“With our church—with the movement,” because that’s what they’re supposed to call it, no church, no God at all, “it’s not about a perfect union. It’s not about a pure soul, because there’s no such thing as either of those. And it’s not about shutting yourself off from your body. People live in the world, they only understand things in worldly terms, and so the body has to be the seat of revelation.”_

*

It’s only when he’s with his band, or when he succeeds in converting one of the broken girls he picks up, that he actually feels something like what he thinks love is supposed to feel like, but that’s fleeting. Love is supposed to last, he thinks, longer that it takes for your heartbeat to slow down. That’s what he’s learned from Ryan’s songs, anyway. 

The one Brendon remembers best, she was maybe 18, blonde hair with little blue streaks in it and a nose ring and one tiny tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle. He doesn’t remember her name, if he ever knew it.

The moment she changed, from just some body to somebody, Brendon was in her cunt and Shane was in her mouth, and she was on her hands and knees between them. He was caught up in the feel, the smell of them, all together in the air, the sight of his cock disappearing into her, the sound of her little choked-off moans, but he looked up when Shane said his name. “Brendon,” he said. “Brendon, she’s crying, what the fuck do I do?” He sounded panicked, but his hips were still making miniscule little thrusts into her mouth.

Brendon left his hands resting on her hips, and she pressed herself back into them, further onto his cock. “Just keep going,” he said, on the edge of a moan. “Keep going, it’s okay.”

Shane still looked freaked, but he fucked her mouth until he came. Brendon kept his eyes on Shane’s face, wondering if he felt it too, the change in her.

Afterwards, when they both pulled out, she lay curled in a little ball on the floor, shoulders shaking. Brendon touched her gently, relieved when she didn’t pull away from his touch; he’d made the right call. He wasn’t used to doing this on his own yet. 

“Run a bath,” he said over his shoulder, and he heard Shane’s footsteps turning out of the room as he turned her face up to his.

Her face was streaked with tears and come, but her eyes had that look in them, the one he’d seen in his own mirror once upon a time.

“You got it, now, huh?” he said, smiling. “It’s all inside you now, isn’t it?” She nodded, gratefully, and Brendon felt so fucking happy, like he hadn’t in a long time.

He led her into the bathroom and helped her into the bath, and then he ducked her head gently beneath the water and held it there, hand clenched in her hair for long seconds as her hands slapped against the sides of the tub. 

“Jesus, Brendon, what—”

“Baptism,” Brendon told Shane. “She’s born anew.” He raised her head out of the water and smiled as she gasped, looking up at him with eyes shining, washed pure.

*

_“Are you getting to the part about your dick any time soon?”_

_“Fag,” Brendon says, throwing the DVD remote at him as he laughs. “Look, okay. To see…the truth, to see the world as it really is, you need to break down the body. Overwhelm it, until there’s nothing but feeling and the word, the word made flesh, so it can get inside you.”_

*

Brendon will never, ever tell Shane about the night they welcomed his baby cousin into The Cab. He figures Shane probably knows, from the look on his face the first time he saw Ian afterwards, but if they don’t talk about it, it’s like they can pretend it didn’t happen. The word creates truth, so in the absence of words, it’s like nothing ever happened at all.

It did happen, though. That night, Jesus, there were so fucking many of them, all of the Cab and everyone in Panic except Jon. It was the Cab’s first conversion, besides their own, and even Brendon and Ryan and Spencer rarely had the time to work on anyone directly, so they were all a little tense, a little worked up from nerves and excitement. 

They had two connecting rooms in the hotel, the door open between so that everyone could hear what was going on, even when they couldn’t see it. Brendon kept wandering in and out from Spencer and two of the Alexs in one room to Ryan and Marshall on the bed in the other, Cash watching from a chair by the bed, reaching out to touch occasionally with a sort of strange fascination on his face. He’d lay his hand on Ian’s skin, gently, or twist a nipple, hard, until Ian cried out, all the time with his eyes on Ian’s face, just watching.

Sometimes they switched, Spencer and Deleon or Marshall or Johnson in with Ian, Ryan in with the rest of them, all of it confused and hectic, too many people, too much going on too fast. Brendon wasn’t sure, at first, if it was too much for Ian, if they were going to break him too far, take him too far down so he couldn’t get up again. It hasn’t happened yet, but that worry is always there, the possibility of breaking someone for the sheer joy of it 

Brendon knew Ian best, so he kept leaning down over him in the bed, stroking his hair back from his forehead and touching his tense shoulders, sliding his fingers in the sweat collected there. “Hey, shh, it’s okay,” he said, over and over again, but Ian just kept shaking, kept clutching Brendon and saying please, please. He was asking for the wrong thing, though, so Brendon let him keep begging.

Eventually he learned to beg for the right thing. 

At the end of the night the rest of the Cab were on the bed, surrounding Ian, touching him all over while he shook and sweated and stared blankly at the ceiling. Ryan came up behind Brendon, leaned his chest against Brendon’s back and let his chin rest on Brendon’s shoulder. “They’re ours,” he said, voice flatly awed in Brendon’s ear. “Our kids. I wonder if this is how Pete and Patrick felt, when they saved us.”

Patrick wasn’t there for Brendon’s conversion. Or for Ryan’s, or for anyone else’s, as far as Brendon knows. He remembers Patrick being there after, though, the night Brendon almost broke from the path forever. He remembers the way he explained it to Brendon, the importance of being someone’s voice, his own voice calm and smooth, cutting through the chaos in Brendon’s head like a knife. 

He thinks sometimes that it was that, the power of Patrick’s voice, that really pulled him back onto the path, instead of Ryan and Spencer and Jon surrounding him; the thought that his voice could have the same kind of power. He hopes it did for Ian during his conversion, bringing him back from the brink and saving him when even the touch of hands and tongue and teeth on his body couldn’t.

*

_“And what’s the truth?”_

*

The first time they’re both inside of someone at the same time, it’s overwhelming. Brendon’s usually the one calling the shots, making the arrangements, but this time he ends up on the bottom, sitting low on the couch with the girl’s long legs spread over his, her wet cunt wrapped around him. Behind her, Shane says, “Are you sure—“ and the girl says, “Fuck, yes, just do it,” into Brendon’s neck. He shivers, first at the heat of her breath on his skin, then again as he feels lube drip onto his thigh from Shane’s hands.

Shane looks at Brendon over the girl’s head, and Brendon says, “Yes. Do it.”

He can tell when Shane starts to press himself inside her because of the way she clenches down on him and her nails dig into his shoulders, but he could have just looked at Shane’s face. At first he was just staring down with a look of concentration, biting his lip, but as soon as the head is inside he closes his eyes, tilting his head back so Brendon can only see his neck, taut, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. The girl whimpers and Brendon holds tight to her hips, tries to whisper reassurance in her ear, because even just being inside her he can feel the stretch, Shane’s cock pressed tight against him with just a wall of skin between them.

Neither of them has ever done it this way before, so all of their context comes from porn. The guys in those movies always look totally disconnected from each other, like they’re both fucking a girl who just happens to be fucking someone else, too, but it’s alarmingly intimate this way, the inside of Shane’s thigh pressed against the outside of Brendon’s, his hands on either side of Brendon’s head, holding himself up, the backs of Brendon’s hands brushing against Shane’s hips as he thrust into her. Brendon does his best to hold the girl up so he can fuck into her, work his hips inside the tight space, but eventually she collapses and he just gives into the weight, letting her body hold him down, letting Shane’s thrusts work through her into Brendon. 

Even though now he’s the one with his cock inside someone else, it feels like the first time—his first time, held down by Pete and Ryan and totally helpless, forced to give in to the experience, his salvation. Except this time it’s Shane above him, staring down at him with a strand of the girl’s long brown hair trapped on his wet lips. His eyes are wide, pupils dilated as he stares down at Brendon, searching his face for something, Brendon doesn’t know what, and then just looking into his eyes, fierce and frightened. It feels like something Brendon should shut his own eyes against, shield his body against, the way their eyes meeting feels as intimate as a kiss, the way the few places their bodies touch feel more sensitized, more raw, than his cock does inside of this girl between them.

Shane inhales loudly, his hands tightening on the back of the couch, one finger rubbing rhythmically against Brendon’s shoulder, and he says, “Brendon.”

That’s when Brendon shuts his eyes, tightening his hands on the girl’s waist so that she moans, clinging to him. He can’t shut out Shane’s voice, though, and he listens, comes, as Shane says his name over and over again before trailing off into a gasp.

*

_“The truth is that there is no truth. That you’re alone in the world with nothing but hurt and lust and pleasure, all of these…things, just happening to you. That you have no control. The only sin is being…being fucking asleep, being dead to the world. All you can do is go down and learn the truth so that you can be aware, and then turn it into art, to wake up other people and to make them feel better about being aware of everything._

_“That’s the only thing that helps, making some kid happy for a few seconds with your songs, with a fuck. Making connections with other people, with your body and your art. Showing them what their place is, where they belong in the world, or in relation to other people. Showing them who they really are.”_

*

He sends the girl away with redemption in her eyes, watching as she limps her way down their driveway. He wishes he had time to deal with her, to explain the path that she’s on, but she’s her own teacher now. Instead he tells her to show up at the next Cab show and shuts the door behind her so he can go back to the living room. Back to Shane.

Shane isn’t there. 

He’d thought—he'd been fucking sure that he’d seen it in Shane’s eyes. The shift, or at least the beginning of it, from skepticism to acceptance, from ignorance to realization of what Brendon was trying to do. What he was doing with Shane. He’d felt some sort of connection in Shane’s eyes, his skin, more than just him being there, being present in his body but checked out in his head; Shane had been there, body and soul. Brendon is sure of it.

He starts when he hears the water in the bathroom suddenly shut off; he’d been so caught up in his head that he hadn’t even heard it running, too busy planning disaster scenarios. With that sound, though, he knows it’s okay. He was right, about everything.

In the bathroom, he finds exactly what he was expecting: Shane, sitting the the tub with his knees drawn up to his chest, looking down at the water. When he hears Brendon push the door open wider he looks up, and Brendon can see it in his eyes. 

Yeah. He was right.

“I’m not—I don’t fucking believe their bullshit, Brendon,” Shane says shakily. “I just need a bath.”

“Okay,” Brendon says softly. “Okay, yeah, me too.”

He gets into the tub opposite Shane. The heat of the water is a sharp contrast to the cold hardness of the faucet against his back, but he doesn’t move, just lies back against it and looks at Shane, feeling their feet brush beneath the water, skin on skin for the first time that isn’t casual, is just about him and Shane and no one else.

This close, together in the bathtub, he could touch Shane’s face. He could kiss him, the way he’s never kissed another man except Ryan, and then only in the context of the ritual, his reminder of where he belongs in the movement; except he knows that it would be different, would be real, if he did. He could push Shane’s head beneath the water, wash him clean and pure the way that Ryan did to him, baptizing him in Pete’s name.

Brendon takes a breath, and reaches out his hands.

*

_“Is that what Pete taught you? Or Ryan?”_

_“No,” Brendon says, sitting up a little straighter. “No, that’s what I learned here. By myself. With you.”_

*

Allow me to exaggerate a memory or two  
Where summers lasted longer than, longer than we do  
And nothing really mattered except for me to be with you  
But in time we all forgot and we all grew

Your melody sounds as sweet as the first time it was sung  
With a little bit more character for show  
And by the time your father's heard of all the wrong you've done  
Then I'm putting out the lantern, find your own way back home

If I'd forgotten how to sing before I'd sung this song  
I'll write it all across the wall before my job is done  
And I'll even have the courtesy of admitting I was wrong  
As the final words before I'm dead and gone

You've never been so divine in accepting your defeat  
And I've never been more scared to be alone.  
If love is not enough to put my enemies to sleep  
Then I'm putting out the lantern, find your own way back home  
\--"Folkin’ Around" by Brendon Urie

**Author's Note:**

> The quote at the beginning was from [here](http://youtu.be/f-yzYfAF1ro), which has unfortunately been taken down. 
> 
> Written for TheAerosolKid.


End file.
